Toumani Diabate, the great Malian kora player, rarely makes it to these shores, so his recent performance at Yoshis in Oakland was a stellar occasion. Known for his virtuosity, Diabate is a living master of the kora, the 21-string West African harp made of wood,metal, and a large calabash gourd. The kora has a characteristic sound, one that is hard to categorize. As he illustrated during the portion of the show when he talked to the audience about his instrument, he plays it with his thumbs a

Salif Keita, 58, a 40-year veteran of the music scene, numbers among Africa's top musical stars. A man in motion, Salif is constantly touring and preaching his humanitarian message. Born into a royal family, Salif found himself barred by social custom from becoming a musician and as an albino, Salif was an outcast who found his means of expression through music. Fleeing a Malian dictatorship to take refuge in the Ivory Coast, he later moved to Paris but has since returned to Mali. Here, he has b

Kronos Quartet Any performance by Kronos Quartet is a special occasion. Three of the ensemble’s four woodwind performers have been playing together for more than three decades and have released more than 45 recordings. No run-of-the-mill chamber quartet, Kronos have collaborated with the a diversity of performers including Chinese pipa player Wu Man, a Romanian Roma band, and an Inuit throat singer named Tanya Tagaq. They have performed on stage with performers as diverse as Betty Carter, the Mo

There aren’t many 1960s elders of jazz still performing these days. Pianists McCoy Tyner and Randy Weston come to mind, as does saxophonist Sonny Rollins, but few others come to mind. That’s one of the things that made the appearance by Ornette Coleman and his group at the San Francisco Symphony Hall as part of the San Francisco Jazz Festival so compelling. Despite the demise of longtime collaborators such as trumpeter and multi-instrumentalist Don Cherry and drummer Ed Blackwell and Bill

Africa may be the ancestral home of jazz, but there are few African-born jazz musicians of renown. The best known is undoubtedly Abdullah Ibrahim. A multi-instrumentalist, Ibrahim is justly famed for his sublime piano playing. Born Dollar Brand in South Africa, Ibrahim, who will turn 75 this October, has led an incredible and very complex life. To summarize, Ibrahim was raised in a ghetto as "coloured" under the Apartheid system. Ibrahim’s father, a member of the Sentso tribe, had